FCC Asks Volunteers: Are Cable Providers Lying About Speeds?

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The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is in the midst of trying to
deploy an unprecedented plan to provide a 100 Mbps public cable
option to
over 100 million American homes. It plans to finance that
ambitious plan by taking
spectrum away from TV broadcasters and reselling it to wireless
companies for use with devices like smartphones. Part of the
profits will go to the TV companies and part will go towards building
a vast new fiber network across the U.S.

While it’s slowly
working to achieve that plan, the FCC plans to continue to try to
pressure cable providers to be more forthright about their
data policies. The FCC is currently enrolling
10,000 volunteers in a study to test if cable companies are
lying about advertised speeds.

According to preliminary
research, cable internet speeds on the average residential connection
may only be half of the advertised rate. But the FCC wants to
make absolutely sure this is the case, and it wants to see which
companies are guilty of this, before it takes action.

Joel
Gurin, who heads the FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau
comments, “The big issue here is knowing what you are paying
for.”

The FCC is pushing Congress to enact legislation
that would force internet service providers to disclose complete
information about their pricing and performance in a more transparent
fashion. The survey should help to justify that call for
transparency.

A mobile internet survey may be in the works as
well, but the FCC is still considering how best to implement it.
In the mean time if you want to help out in the cable survey, you can
travel to the “TestMyISP” page here.